When most of the people think about editing photographs and adding some effects to them, they automatically think about Photoshop. It is true that Photoshop is a multi functional and powerful software. There is probably no argue about it being the leader in photo editing software industry.

The thing that most people don’t know is that it is not the only program that allows them to add nice effects to their photographs . Another thing many people don’t realize is that most of them don’t really need such powerful software like adobe photoshop since they don’t use many of its features anyway. Adobe Photoshop is not cheap and it is really not necessary to purchase it if you will not be using most of it’s abilities.

There are freeware photo editing programs on the web that can enable you make some very nice changes to your photos and even add some very neat effects.

Amazingly many people just are not aware of this possibility or don’t believe that freeware programs can give them professional results. Well that is a mistake . There are some very professional programs offered for free on the net.

One of those photo editing programs is Gimp. Gimp is a very powerful image editing program and it is offered absolutely free. Although this software is free it can be considered a comparable product to adobe Photoshop. Off course it doesn’t have all of the features Photoshop cs3/4 has to offer but some very advanced things can be done with this image editing software. It can be considered a light version of Photoshop, something like Photoshop element 5.0 only it’s free. It has some very advanced manipulating tools, smart selection tool like in Photoshop and more than 100 of different effects you can apply to your images.

FotoFlexer is very nice and simple photo editing program. It allows you to make some very interesting changes to your photographs. You can easily make objects disappear from your photos. The program has a nice morph tool, smart resize feature and tutorials that will help you start editing right away. The tutorials are located on the software website.

Paint.net is another open source photo editing programs located on www.getpaint.net website. It can enable you make all those simple changes to your photographs: Resize, Crop, Move, Rotate, adjust colors and more. It can be good for amateur users who just want to make their photos look good. It’s not complicated. The downside is that the red eye filter is not the best and the software does not work on Mac.

Sumo paint – a very user friendly and free alternative to adobe Photoshop. There is some compatibility with adobe Photoshop interface. The layer window is very much like in Photoshop, and so are the swatches and color picker windows. When saving the files you have 3 options: Sumo, png and jpg. Sumo format is like psd to Photoshop, it saves all the layer info.

Pixlr.com is a browser based photo editing program. The interface is also looks a lot like Photoshop. It can be used to make some advanced manipulations to your photographs.

Splashup.com another free browser based photo editing program with Photoshop look a like interface. Runs in all browsers. It is easy to use and has some powerful tools. Multiple image editing is possible. There are layer blend modes, filters, layer effects, brushes and more.

Aviary – phoenix , another online program that it’s setup is similar to Photoshop. Like splashup and pixlr it doesn’t take hardware space but takes quiet a lot of ram.